Florida Police Officers Who Slammed A 15 Year-Old Black Boy's Head To The Ground In Viral Arrest Vid

[Judi Lynn]

Source: BuzzFeed News

Florida Police Officers Who Slammed A 15 Year-Old Black Boy's Head To The Ground In Viral Arrest Video Said He Was Acting "Aggressive"

The high school student was attempting to retrieve a cell phone that had fallen out of the pocket of another teen who was being arrested.

Ellie Hall
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 21, 2019, at 5:13 p.m. ET



Twitter

A Florida police deputy has been placed on restricted duty after cellphone video footage surfaced of two white officers slamming the head of a pepper-sprayed black teenager against the ground while placing him under arrest on Thursday.

Thousands of people shared videos of the incident on Twitter and Facebook over the weekend, tagging them "#justiceforlucca," and demanding that the officers be fired or prosecuted.

Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said in a statement Friday that the department would conduct a "thorough investigation" into the incident and said that Deputy Christopher Krickovich, one of the officers pictured in the video, had been placed on restricted duty.

In an arrest warrant affidavit, Krickovich said that the teenage boy — who has been identified on social media as "Lucca" or "DeLucca" — took an "aggressive stance" towards his partner while they were arresting another teenager for trespassing.

Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/justice-for-lucca-viral-video-broward-police

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R for exposure

Looks like extreme violence due to racism to me...

[mr_lebowski]

2. Florida cops seem to be pretty friggin out of control ... this was only a week ago ...

11 year old kid ... body slammed on the pavement by the pigs ...

https://www.facebook.com/WPTV5/videos/1281560208666007/

[Honeycombe8]

3. The problem with some of these videos is they don't show the whole incident.

Just the end part.

Just an observation...it was necessary to call police to get him to leave the classroom, so that tells me something about the young man. It is entirely possible he was being aggressive in the leadup to when the cops pepper sprayed him. But that's not on the video. Maybe not, but maybe.

[Jedi Guy]

4. A fair observation, Honeycombe8.

You're right in that the entire incident needs to be considered, not just the bit at the end. We know that video can be selectively edited in order to twist the perceptions of the viewer(s). Furthermore, each incident needs to be considered on an individual basis.

That said, the fact that police were called to get him to leave the classroom (EDIT: it was a McDonald's in this case, not a school) doesn't necessarily mean a lot. The kid who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance wound up having the school resource officer called on him, and he hadn't done anything wrong.

To some cops, being asked, "Why are you doing what you're doing?" is "an aggressive stance." In any case, once he was on the ground, it didn't look to me like the kid was resisting them. He had his arms spread out, palms down, and only moved one arm back in so he could get it under his head to protect it from hitting the ground.

I usually try to give the cops the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to imagine a justification for the amount of force they applied here. I predict that this will not go well for the city, the sheriff's department, and the individual officers involved.

[BlueFlorida]

5. No words ....

This makes me angry

[johannsyah]

6. this is so wrong

I bet they wouldn't want to do it on white teens. smh.

[The Mouth]

7. They did to this white guy as a teen

A few buddies and I got in trouble decades ago. They thought one- or more - of us were shoplifting (actually, one of us was). I dropped my wallet as the cop was pushing me over to a wall, when I reached down to grab it I got slammed, hard. And my fingers stomped on between wallet and cop's foot.

While I dislike police authoritarianism as much as anyone, and am quite aware of the propensity of *some*cops to brutalize African Americans with zero justification- if I cop says 'keep still', or 'let me see your hands', or some such, not complying is a really good way to get hurt, or worse.

Trying to resist a cup is just plain dumb, white or black, male or female, young or old and a real issue is that many cops take *ANYTHING* other than immediate, unquestioning obedience as 'resistance'; that is my direct observation

If you are young and black you're even MORE likely to end up dead or seriously hurt, no argument, but yeah, they'll gladly manhandle even a lily-white teen if given any 'tude (or much of an excuse)...

[Marthe48]

8. I found out a lady I know

Lost her oldest son in 2014, police shot and killed him because he was acting suspicious. I knew the mom and kids in the 90s, lost track, friended her on fb recently, learned this weekend her son had been murdered. City of Akron, Oh. claim the officer didn't do wrong, but the family was awarded $125,000.00 this year. It is bad enough when I read news stories every day about the mistreatment or death of people of color, but when a family I know has suffered this loss, it is sad.

[ROB-ROX]

9. The Cops Should Be In Prison

THEY GOT THE STORY WRONG BECAUSE THEY ARE CRIMINALS WITH A BADGE. I think they should be in prison to show other cops that justice will be done.

[Grins]

10. A 15-year old boy?

Two BIG cops couldn’t handle a scrawny (to me) 15-year old boy? I’m calling bullshit on these cops.